


Riddles and Love Letters

by Waxwing



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman: The Animated Series
Genre: M/M, Submissive Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2014-03-19
Packaged: 2018-01-04 05:39:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1077171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waxwing/pseuds/Waxwing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The doctors at Arkham would later call what had happened to him a “psychotic break” but he preferred to think of it as an abrupt, unexpected personal transformation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Best Thing

Edward Nygma had always had a...complicated relationship with physical pain. 

When he was very little he had been terrified of it. On nights when his father went out to the bar (most nights) he would lay awake in the dark, beneath his thin blankets, listening for heavy foot steps. Only when he heard his father stumble past his room and into his own was he able to fall asleep, relatively certain that no one would be bursting through his door and dragging him out of bed to hit and kick and choke him. The anticipation of pain plagued every waking moment of his home life and haunted his restless dreams. As time went by and he realized that the pain would always eventually come no matter how cautious or well behaved he was he became inoculated against that anxiety. Pain was a part of life, he grew to view being beaten the same way he viewed boring lessons at school, as something to be passively endured before he was able to go about his business. He didn't even watch what he said anymore, in fact he learned to use his sharp tongue as a sort of short cut. He may not be able to stop the pain from happening but he could control when it happened. Just a few well placed cutting remarks and then all he had to do was go limp and wait for it to be over. Once his father got tired and stomped off (to ether the garage or the bar depending on how close they were to pay day) he could get on with his day secure in the knowledge that he had roughly eight hours until it was that time again. 

Edward had hated (HATED) the times when his father tried to "clean up his act." Usually his father zigzagged between abuse and neglect with predictable regularity, but during his occasional sober spells Edward never knew what to expect. His father might wake him up in the middle of the night to make a tearful, long winded speech about how his greatest regret was having failed as a parent and promise that things were going to be different from then on. The next morning he'd wake Edward up early and make him breakfast (which was quite possibly the worst part since he was a terrible cook) and then for days or weeks he'd cycle from quiet and moody to aggressively friendly to sour and irritable with no describable pattern. The absolute worst part was the absence of pain, not because he missed it, but because he knew it would be coming back but he had no idea when or how or with what degree of severity. Usually by the time his father gave up the farce Edward was such an anxious wreck that he was down right relieved when his father finally backhanded him for an imagined dirty look or called him a "faggot" and pushed him down the stairs. The more regularly the pain occurred the less of a source of anxiety it was. Things carried on that way until he was 13 and social services came and took him away, he spent two years in a group home and then petitioned the state for emancipation. 

He had had a few lukewarm relationships in his early 20's. He supposed he was a good boyfriend. He did "good boyfriend" things like cooking dinner and paying for outings and buying gifts and giving frequent compliments but things always seemed to fizzle out, usually do to some combination of his being emotionally withdrawn and his being sexually disinterested. Sex was ok he guessed...he just didn't get what all the hoopla was about and most women seemed to find his ability to take or leave physical intimacy decidedly off putting, some of them even took it as a personal insult despite his gentlemanly efforts to assure them otherwise. Ether way, it always ended with a more or less mutually agreed upon break up about which he found himself caring far less than most would have considered appropriate. Eventually he had settled into a comfortable-yet-solitary existence. He got all the personal satisfaction that he needed from his work. True, there were some nights that he got lonely, but at least there was no one making ridiculous emotional demands of him or invading his privacy or insisting on touching him when he didn't want to be touched. Inside there was always the indescribable absence of... something, but he was sure that if he just got enough professional respect and enough money and enough expensive things that void would eventually be filled and he would finally... finally...The point was that he was pretty sure that baser needs like companionship and physical intimacy were beneath him. He was an intellectual titan after all, he didn't need anything that he couldn't get with his intellect. He was on his own side and he didn't need anyone... 

...then his boss had stolen from him...and he'd lost his job...and his comfortable-yet-solitary life had been destroyed...and his carefully constructed sense of self had been shattered. It had been painful and terrifying and traumatic and...and the best thing that could possibly have happened to him.


	2. The Gotham Gazette <3 Batman

The doctors at Arkham would later call what had happened to him a “psychotic break” but he prefered to think of it as an abrupt, unexpected personal transformation. Insanity is something that happens slowly over time, you bend and crack and splinter until eventually you shatter, but that hadn’t happened to Edward. His old self had been more like an exoskeleton growing tighter as he expanded inside it, doing so so gradually that he didn’t even notice. It wasn’t until he’d finally burst forth from that shell (...”conspired to commit murder”...whatever) that he actually realized he’d been slowly suffocating for so many years. When he had finally rid himself of Eddie Nashton he had realized that he was so much more, so much bigger than all the petty constraints that had defined that sad, little man. He was The Riddler now, he was a force to be reckoned with, he was powerful and vital and truly alive for the first time...that is until Batman had shown up.  


He wasn’t too proud to admit that he’s been caught off guard by the Bat. After all, as far as he knew the Batman only ever went after...well, bad guys...and he certainly wasn’t that...no, no. His boss was the bad guy, of that he was sure. He was just getting his richly deserved revenge and it wasn’t as though he had any other options, the courts had failed him and he knew he was right. Surely no one who cared at all about justice would have sided against him...but Batman had.  


He had gone on a little hiatus after that, the fact that his first outing in his new persona had technically been a failure had taken quite a bit of wind out of his sails. He needed time to reflect, to reevaluate...to plot. This plotting had been done mostly in a $15 dollar a night motel room in Gotham’s red light district. The plot to kill his boss hadn’t exactly been a profitable one per say but it had been high profile and conspicuous enough that everyone in Gotham now knew who he was and the police were on high alert for him. This happened to him a lot, he’d get so caught up in a project that he’d forget to plan for anything after that projects completion, it was one of the surprisingly many pitfalls of having a mind as exceptionally efficient as his. Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t even had any idea what he would have done had he succeeded (stupid, stupid, stupid.)  


It wasn’t as though he had any regrets, after all he had been right so what was there to regret? And he had every intention of learning from his mistakes and doing better next time. There WOULD be a next time, it’s just that right now he was so tired...in fact more tired then he could recall having ever been in his life...exhausted really.It was because of this exhaustion (was exhaustion supposed to be physically painful?) that his “plotting” wound up beig not so much “plotting” as sleeping on and off for days at a time, barely eating and obsessively watching his press. He’d spend most of his days curled up under the thin, scratchy hotel comforter drifting in and out of consciousness, somehow always managing to wake up just in time for the news which he watched on mute for fear of attracting attention...and because he like seeing “Riddler” spelled out in those little green letters across the bottom of the screen. Usually around sundown he’d cross the street to the gas station to pick up the day's newspaper and the largest, sweetest, most caffeinated drink he could find.  


The Gotham Gazette was in love with him, every day there was more speculation (all of it way off the mark), more interviews (most of them with people from his former workplace who claimed to be far more familiar with him then they actually were) and most welcome of all more flattery. Of Course he knew they didn’t mean it as flattery (he wasn’t delusional) but he couldn’t help but blush at being called things like mad GENIUS, criminal MASTER MIND, SUPER villain. Yes, the Gotham Gazette was in love with him and he loved them right back, that is until the Joker escaped from Arkham and stole all his coverage, reducing him to a paragraph or less giving little information other than that he was “still at large.” It would have been bad enough that he was being ignored but the fact that all it had taken to erase him from the public consciousness was for some spastic, uncouth...CLOWN to blow up a factory (“the largest of Gotham’s many chemical rendering plants the destruction of which killed all the fish in Gotham harbor and created a layer of toxic fog that hung over the city for 12 solid days”...whatever) stuck in him like a jagged splinter. To his own surprise he had actually found himself rooting for Batman to catch the garish psychotic.  


Gradually he realized he’d been mistaken, it was Batman that the Gotham Gazette was in love with, in fact it seemed to be Batman that all of Gotham was in love with. He realized that their infatuation with him had just been a side effect of their deep, abiding love affair with the Dark Knight. Even the so called “big names” of the Gotham underground only got the attention they did because they were the ones most often found to be Bat adjacent. It seemed that what counted most was not how much money you made or how much damage you did (though the Joker was certainly the leader in the latter category) but how much of Batman’s attention you could command. What other explanation was there for the fact that Rupert Thorne practically ran Gotham and yet the average Gothamite barely knew who he was? And the Penguin, despite his considerable wealth and influence, was seen as only one of the Dark Knight’s lesser adversaries but the Joker was a household name. The sound of the clowns laugh was something every man woman and child in Gotham recognized and responded to on a visceral level, and why? Because he knew just how to make the Dark Knight come running.  


Inside himself he could feel a switch flipping and the gears starting to turn. Just like that he was back and now that he understood how things worked he was certainly going to do something with that information, something just for Batman. He could feel an idea already forming but he wanted to hurry things along so that night he took a few detours on his usual trip. After several hours, countless back alleys and several two bit drug dealers desperately trying to convince him that what they had was better, he finally found someone who had what he was looking for. He’d been introduced to Adderall by one of the many court appointed counselors he’d been sent to during his time in the group home, the poor, well meaning, not-very-bright woman had mistaken his unwillingness to comply with the puerile lesson plans at school for attention deficit disorder and in the time that followed he had grown increasingly grateful for her error in judgement. On his own he was bright (far and away brighter than what passed for “average”), but Adderall fine tuned and focused his natural brilliance into something bordering on superhuman. It had helped him in school, but only because it had enabled him to cram an entire semester’s worth of work into a single weekend leaving the remainder of his time open for more worthy pursuits. Some might have seen his occasional use of chemical enhancement as a point of shame but what did they know? No matter how fast of a runner you are, you’re a fool if you pass up the opportunity to fly...and, anyway, it’s wasn’t like he needed it ALL the time.  


After downing the pills he ate his first solid food in days. He had considered not eating, digestion tended to slow his faculties and taking the pills on an empty stomach would speed their effects, but he didn’t want to risk throwing them up. He got what was being sold as a burrito at the gas station and managed to down half of it, ignoring his own better judgement as it shrieked about what he was putting into his body. The feeling of the pills kicking in was like running into an old friend in a foreign country. There was no need for sleep that night or the following two nights, he had slept enough.  


By the time the sun rose on the fourth day he had his grand design laid out in phases. Phase one was to get a hold of roughly $800, that he could do himself since Gotham was full of all night gas stations and liquor stores and all sorts of places that were usually only manned by between one and three people and he’d bought a handgun off the desk clerk and a domino mask from the party store up the street and he knew how to disable silent alarms before he even entered the building. Phase two was to get a hold of some hired help, stripped down to it’s bare bones phase three was at minimum a three point operation. Luckily he was coming down from his Adderall high, so not even the anxiety he felt at the prospect of combing the Gotham underground for people desperate enough to work for someone who was (if he was honest with himself) sort of...kind of...a nobody...at least for the time being, wasn't enough to keep him from sleeping. Rudimentary as phase one was going to be, he felt that it would be best for him to have a level head his first time wielding a firearm.

When he woke it was noon...48 hours later, he must have been more tired than he’d realized but no matter, he had until sundown to prepare for phase one. The hand gun he’d bought was nothing special, in fact he had doubts that it would even fire and the fact that the desk clerk had only wanted $25 for it certainly didn’t do anything to raise his confidence. Unfortunately he couldn't test it inconspicuously in this densely populated of an area. He supposed he’d just have to bank on the intimidation factor, if there was anything the average Gothamite wasn't it was a hero so his odds of getting what he wanted without having to fire a single shot were pretty good. He just hoped that his unwitting target didn't have a firearm of their own, which admittedly was a bit gamble since this was Gotham after all.  
He watched the news, the Joker had been caught three days ago but they were still finding bombs he’d hidden around the city, the other hot item was a crystal clear picture of Batman climbing up a fire escape that some kid had snapped out of an apartment window, the experts they kept on hand for such occasions had every reason to believe it was real. When the news had finished he walked across the street and bought a vanilla cappuccino and one of those single serving sized boxes of Cheerios, he was able to choke down about half of it dry. He read the newspaper and then tried to take his mind off the fact that “The Riddler” was now at the bottom of the “Still At Large” list that the paper ran daily (right under someone using the groan worthy alias “The Cuisinart”) by doing the crossword puzzle, as predicted it provided an insufficient challenge. He cut the completed crossword out of the paper, taped it to the wall alongside the others and found as many words from the previous day in it as he could, as usual there was a 40% overlap...lazy.  


He flipped through the television channels and then turned the television off altogether, then he locked the door, then he turned off the lights. He lay there in the dark, trying to ignore the lewd sounds coming from the room next door (he was fairly sure the woman residing there was a prostitute) and tried desperately to quiet his mind. He kept trying to tell himself this was the easy part, he had no reason to be nervous. This was the easy part and he was a criminal master mind, the papers had all said so...even if that had been three months ago... and there was no reason his hands should be shaking. He was a criminal master mind and criminal masterminds most certainly did not get anxious over phase one, phase one should feel as natural to him as breathing and....why was it suddenly so hard to breath?  
Out of nowhere the strangest thought occurred to him. Wouldn't it be AWFUL (he thought) if he weren't a criminal master mind? Wouldn't it be absolutely TERRIBLE (he thought) if he really wasn't as changed as he had thought? If he was still just Eddie Nashton? Except that now Eddie Nashton was unemployed and broke and wanted for attempted murder? Wouldn't it be absolutely ABYSMAL if trying to kill his boss had actually been an overreaction on his part? And he had thrown away any chance he’d ever had at having a normal life and nearly MURDERED a man all for some over blown temper tantrum?  


Why yes (he agreed with himself) that would be the worst thing imaginable because there was NO WAY Eddie Nashton would be able to cope with the situation he was in...Eddie Nashton had never had so much as an unpaid parking ticket or been late to work or skipped out on jury duty, so there’s no way he’d be able to manage phase one and the following phases would have been inconceivable to him. Yes, it was a DAMNED good thing he wasn't Eddie Nashton anymore because right about now Eddie Nashton would be asking himself what the HELL he was doing and how in GOD’S NAME he had let things go this far. At this moment Eddie Nashton would feel like he was in over his head and it was all his own DAMNED fault and what did he think he was going to do with that gun any way? KILL somebody? He couldn't KILL anybody! Eddie Nashton would probably think something ridiculous like how the fact that he had done EVERYTHING right and worked hard and used his intelligence to claw his way out of poverty and in the end it hadn't even mattered and he’d lost everything to some trust fund baby just because he could hire better lawyers was somehow proof that his father had been right...that he was a failure and a loser and there was no point in even trying. Eddie Nashton would probably be hung up on the fact that in this instance FAILURE meant death, he would probably keep going over the numbers in his head about how many FAILED super-villains wound up in the morgue in Gotham every year and (since he was a FAILURE) he was doomed to wind up there too. Eddie Nashton wouldn't be able to stop imagining being crushed under a pile of dead bodies in brightly colored costumes and slowly suffocating and...  


Bolting upright he covered his mouth with his hands to keep the bile that was suddenly filling it from spilling out, ran to the bathroom and wretched up a grainy brown sludge that used to be Cheerios. For a few minutes he just sat there on the bathroom floor (which the neurotic little voice in the back of his mind helpfully informed him was filthy) with his arms wrapped around his knees, shaking and taking deep breaths through his nose. When he finally did stand it caused a dull throbbing in his temples and he dry heaved a couple of times but luckily there was nothing in his stomach to throw up. He dumped out the remainder of his cappuccino, which by now was cold and thick as spit, refiled the cup with cold water and gulped it down. After three more refills he brushed his teeth and then went to the bedroom and took the bag in which he’d put the gun and the mask out from under the bed. He went back into the bathroom and primped in the mirror a little, putting his hair in order had always gone a long way toward helping him feel that all was right with the world.  


Once he was as satisfied with is appearance as he could be under the circumstances he took the mask out of the bag and put it on then took the gun out. Though the image in the mirror was not what anyone would have called menacing, something about it made him smile. He found himself thinking that he looked quite dashing in a mask and then snickering at the fact that that was where his mind had gone. He was still a little shaky and a little light headed but ultimately, he decided, he felt pretty good. Yes, he thought, it was a good thing that he wasn't Eddie Nashton anymore because Eddie Nashton would be horrified right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoping the fact that this one is much longer than the first one will make up for how long it took to write it.  
> Just so you know, my head cannon Riddler is bipolar, suffers from occasional panic attacks and has an eating disorder and a mild dependency on Adderall. If any of those things bothers you you might not want to read anymore.


	3. Foiled Again

As he stepped out of the hotel lobby the night air hit him like the breath of some enormous animal. There had been a light rain all day which had persisted until just before the sun went down, it had left the sidewalks coated in a sheen of water which the 90 degree temperatures had turned into a fog as thick as soup. From above Gotham looked like a big black clot with thick neon veins scattered through it. The veins were the main streets, the clot was...everything else. Businesses operated in the veins and people lived in the clot.  


He had planned his course, he was going to take back allies so that as few people as possible would see him coming and going from the 24 hour Gas-n-Go that he had picked as his target. It was on the outer recesses of the vein so it it wasn’t highly trafficked, he had inconspicuously walked past it every night for the past week and determined the hours during which it was most likely to be empty. It was staffed by a lone, portly middle aged woman who looked world weary but not rough enough to actually be willing to shoot him (in the event that she had a gun.) He would go around back first and disable the silent alarm and the phone, slip in through the west side of the building, “do the deed”, slip back out around the back and take the back alleys back to where he was standing now. He was wearing a green hooded sweat shirt and the mask and gun were in the black bag he was carrying, after he disabled the alarm he would put up the hood and put the mask on, he would remove them when he was at least a block from the location.  


Easy, he told himself, laughably easy...it was a wonder anyone ever made money any other way really. Why hadn’t he thought of this before? Oh, yeah, because Eddie Nashton had cared about silly things like “right” and “wrong" and...No, no, no, put that out of your head...focus. He made it to the location without even realizing he’d gotten there but as soon as he realized where he was a switch in his head flipped and suddenly all the background noise was gone.  


Thought he had had an idea of how to do it for a long time, he had never actually disarmed a security system before, so he found himself pleasantly surprised at how he flowed reflexively through the operation. Once the alarm was off he slipped the mask out of the bag, donned it and pulled up his hood. He carefully peered through one of the gas station's many floor to ceiling windows until he was sure it was empty (save for the woman attending the counter) and then burst through the door. The bell that clamored his entrance startled him more than it should have but the women behind the counter seemed equally startled. There was a long beat of silence during which she simply stared at him, slight alarm reading in her dull, bovine eyes. Edward realized that he wasn’t holding the gun and as he slipped it from the bag he grappled in his mind for something to say. Why hadn’t he thought of anything?  


Luckily as soon as the woman behind the counter saw the gun she opened the register and began mechanically removing the money, this was clearly not the first time she’d been in this situation. Edward took the few steps to the counter and handed her the bag.  


“In here.” He sounded less like a robber in a movie and more like he was trying to coach her through her half of a task they were performing together. None the less, she did as she was told, the whole while being markedly careful not to make eye contact with him. When she finished there was another beat of awkward silence, he should say something here, right? He realized suddenly the she was now intently watching his face and ...oh, he didn’t like that.  


“Turn around,” he barked and pulled back the hammer on the gun. “You keep your eyes on the wall until you hear me leave, turn around once before then and you lose. Understood?”  


“I think so.” She whimpered in a way that made him want to grind his teeth.  


In the back of his mind he was telling himself to leave, he had done what he came here to do, why was he still milling around?  


“I...” it came out sort of soft and breathy and the woman behind the counter nearly turned around to look at him but stopped herself, Edward took a deep breath through his nose and on the exhale what he hadn’t even realized he’d meant to say flowed out like water. “I have millions of eyes, yet I live in darkness. I have millions of ears, yet only four lobes. I have no muscles, yet I rule two hemispheres. What am I?”  


There was another beat of silence and then the woman began to audibly sob.  


“Please don’t kill me?” she choked out between mucus clogged gasps.  


As she was facing the wall, she didn’t see him cringe, nor did she see how he stumbled slightly as he bolted for the door. Dashing back out into the oppressively humid night, he inwardly scolded himself. Why in the name of all that was good and rational did he SAY that? Everything had gone as planned, he had been about to get away free and clear, and then literally at the last SECOND he’d provided the only piece of evidence the police would need to link him to the crime! He may as well have written “Riddler was here” in neon green paint across the building's facade!  


Had Edward not been so consumed with self loathing at that particular moment, he may have seen the two leather clad figures walking towards him from the other end of the alley, he may even have avoided running (when had he started running?) head on into the taller of the two of them. Unfortunately for him, the woman (upon colliding with her he quickly realized that she was a woman) was surprisingly sturdy and he wound up on his back in a puddle while she barely flinched in response to the impact. His instinct to scramble to retrieve the money he'd dropped was put on pause when he felt the cold barrel of a gun against his left temple.  


“Wow, I guess we’re gonna’ have it easy tonight.” A voice that was somehow both girlish and mature floated down from above him. Edward looked up to see a petite woman in nothing but black platform boots, thigh-high fishnets, black leather short shorts and a pair of black pasties looking down at him through big, blue eyes. She had long, wavy hair that he could tell was actually blonde despite the fact that she’d used one of those cheap spray-in dyes to turn it a cartoonish shade of red which, Edward noticed with a slight twinge of embarrassment, was not far off from his own natural hair color. She had a smattering of freckles across her nose that was only partly visible under a black domino mask that looked as though it could have come from the same costume shop where he’d bought his.  


The other woman (the one he’d run into) stood behind her now, looming over her like a skyscraper. She was in what could have been considered a more practical outfit which consisted of knee high black combat boots over leather pants and a black leather bustier. Her long, straight, canary yellow hair was clearly a wig...she was also about as muscular as a woman could get without steroids. In the place of a domino mask she wore a pair of futuristic sunglasses that were large enough to cover half her face. Anywhere else the sight of the two of them standing in an alley would have looked positively surreal but this was what crime looked like in Gotham.  
Just as the smaller one finished talking, the taller one moved behind him and pressed the barrel of her gun (which was very large and clearly in far better working order than his) against the base of his skull.  


“Pick it up.” She hissed in a voice that was barely audible but somehow perfectly clear to his ears. As he scrambled to shovel the now wet, dirty money back into his bag the two of them stood over him in unnerving silence, eyeing him like two lionesses eyeing a sickly wildebeest. When he finished collecting the money the woman in front of him held out her hand at exactly the same time as the gun barrel pressed to the back of his neck gave a gentle nudge. He handed over the money (the vital fruits of phase one without which the remainder of the plan would shrivel and die) mechanically and unthinkingly. His mind, which was normally too quick for his own good, seeming to have gotten stuck in a glitch.  


Only when they began to walk away from him and desperation began to claw it's way up from the pit of his stomach did he finally find his voice.  


“Wait!” The word left his mouth seemingly of its own volition. The smaller one turned around first while the taller one kept going a few more paces before she realized she wasn’t being followed.  


“Come on, sweetie, don’t be stupid.” The faux red head giggled and raised her gun again.  


“Oh, no, no, no.” He forced a weak laugh of his own as he rose to his feet. He made a gesture as though to brush himself off but then thought better of it, lest they think he was reaching for a weapon. “I was just wondering...if you lovely ladies might happened to be looking for more...substantial employment.”  


There was a pause during which he was fairly certain he felt more embarrassed than he ever had in his life and then the smaller one spoke.  


“Ok, one, we’re not hookers and, two, you’re the least threatening pimp I’ve ever seen.” At that the taller one laughs and Edward feels like something inside him is crumbling.  


“I’m not a pimp.” It takes all the self control in his body to keep his tone neutral. “I’m a...a super villain.”  


The phrase “super villain” had looked perfectly natural when he’d seen it printed in the news paper over and over and over again but right now, coming out of his own mouth, it sounds...silly. For that very reason he isn’t at all surprised when they both laugh, this time in a far more natural, unrestrained way that would actually be pleasant if it weren’t at his expense.  


“No, really.” Edward feels his face flush and is glad the alley isn’t well lit enough for them to notice. “I was all over the news about...six months ago.”  


At this they stop laughing but their expressions are still far from serious. The one in the yellow wig walks around her companion to stand right in front of him. All at once he’s acutely aware of the fact that she’s easily six inches taller than him. When she raises her right hand he reflexively flinches back but is stopped by her left hand latching on to the front of his shirt. She removes his mask and he cringes at the feel of her fingers against his face, then she pushes his hood down.  


“Oh,” she says with the tone of someone who has just remembered where they parked their car. “It’s that...question mark guy.”  


“Oh yeah,” the petite ones eyes lit up with recognition. “You’re that geek who kidnapped that rich guy!”  


“Edward Nygma.” The tall one stated flatly.  


“Yes,” Edward felt a little of the tension melt from his frame.  


“I thought that guy was dead.”  


“Dead?” Edward tries to turn and look incredulously at the smaller one but the taller one still has the front of his shirt in her fist.  


“Yeah, that’s the word of mouth on it anyway, that you killed yourself after Batman ‘foiled your plot’ or whatever. People are assuming that’s why you disappeared for half a year... and I’m not real clear on the technical qualifications, but I’m pretty sure it takes more than just almost killing one guy to make you a ‘super villain’.”  


“Well...” for a moment Edward chokes on the indignant rage building inside him, which is made all the worse by the fact that the girl hadn’t said anything that wasn’t perfectly reasonable. “Not only am I not dead...”  


“Obviously.” The taller one cuts him off and smirks when he glares at her.  


“Not only am I NOT dead, but I happen to be in the early stages of what is sure to be a very profitable endeavor.”  


“What? The great gas station heist of 2014?” The little one quips and the big one laughs and Edward grits his teeth to keep from screaming.  


“As I said, this is the earliest in a series of stages. I need that,” he nods at the duffle bag, “to procure the necessary materials for...something bigger. I also happen to be in the market for two accomplices.” Edward is careful not to sound too hopeful, he knows there’d be no point in that.  


“Uh, no, we don’t do the whole ‘hench-ing’ thing.”  


“Why not?” For the first time since the encounter began, Edward makes eye contact with the smaller girl.  


“Because it’s a good way to get killed.” She says it as though it were the most obvious of facts because in Gotham it is. “I knew this guy who fell in with the Killer Croc gang and he wound up getting fuckin’ EATEN.”  


“What if I could promise each of you a minimum of $10,000 within the week?”  


At that they both prick up their ears and Edward feels encouraged.  


“All you would have to do is let me keep that” he pointed at the bag which was hanging from the smaller ones shoulder “and help me execute my plan.”  


“How do we know we can trust you?” the smaller one said.  


“And even if we can” the taller one chimed in “how do we know this...plan of yours will work?”  


“Yeah!” the smaller one reacted as though it were some great revelation. “That too! All you’ve done so far is fail at killing some rich guy.”  


“Not exactly an impressive resume.” The taller one deadpanned.  


“Alright...” Edward swallowed, his mouth was suddenly unbearably dry. “How about this, you two keep the money and we agree to meet tomorrow ...at a location of your choosing, there I will explain the plan to you and if you don’t like it you can simply decline my offer, if you do like it then you still keep the money but you come with me when I go to procure materials so you don’t ever even have to trust me. That way you can choose to pull out at any time, you see, because you’ll always have control over the money.”  


For a while they seemed to be contemplating (with identical tilts to their heads), he was surprised when the taller one spoke first.  


“And if the plan fails?”  


“Well then....” Edward’s mind churned furiously. “You’ll know where to find me...and you can tell the authorities.”  


The smaller one’s brow furrowed in confusion.  


“There’s a reward for any information leading to my capture.”  


“Not much of one.” The taller one said with such scorn that for a moment he wanted to strike her.  


“More than there is in that bag.” He ground out through clenched teeth.  


The taller one looked at the smaller one who seemed to be mulling it over.  


“Ok” she said simply. “There’s an abandoned house at the corner of 32nd and Main Street, meet us there at 2 a.m. Wednesday morning, come in through the back, If you bring anyone with you we’ll blow off their head and yours.”  


“Deal!” Edward felt his face split into a smile which stayed in place even as he watched the two women walk away with his money.

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on bit of this and a bit of that but the Riddler's back story here is mostly based on his back story in Batman the Animated Series. The explicit parts are going to come in after I've gotten some exposition and characterization out of the way.
> 
> Any feedback is greatly appreciated.


End file.
